Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The latest involves comments made by Cleveland Indians radio broadcaster Tom Hamilton during a ninth inning at-bat by Nick Swisher against Aroldis Chapman.

Chapman threw back-to-back pitches high and tight to Swisher which forced the latter to duck out of the way both times. It should be noted that both pitches were clocked around 100 MPH and the last one sparked the Indians to nearly clear out of the dugout. But that isn't the biggest takeaway from the scene.

No, as you can tell from the video clip, Hamilton sounded extremely animated during the whole at-bat, and dropped a few controversial remarks during the ordeal.
At one point, Hamilton uttered the following: ”What you’d love to see Swisher do here is to knock it right off the temple of Chapman and see how much fun it is to have a ball coming at your head. That is bush league.”

Wait, what?

Hamilton didn't stop the tough guy talk there, though.

"There will be other games and there will be Reds hitter that will pay the price for the stunt of Aroldis Chapman...This isn’t over yet.”” he said.

Apparently, Hamilton also thought it would be nice to throw in a subtle jab at Chapman's nationality, as well.

"You just can't throw at people's head in this league," Hamilton said. "Maybe you get away with that in Cuba."

Now, by no means am I condoning pitchers throwing at the head of hitters. It is stupid, dangerous, and uncalled for, and something that should never be done. But it's unclear what compelled Chapman to throw that far inside the plate on two consecutive pitches to Swisher in the first place. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether the location of the pitches were thrown with intent.

When asked about his comments Tuesday afternoon, Hamilton said, “I’m not going there. Sorry. Don’t mean to disappoint you. What's said is said.”
However, Hamilton's on-air retaliation remarks certainly crossed the line of professionalism. He obviously believed Chapman's intentions were ill-advised. But that doesn't give him a right to revert to "bush league" commentary himself.